CDD Design Principles

Make investments responsive to informed demand       
– Decisions based on accurate information about costs and benefits of options
– Communities’ own resources invested
Build participatory mechanisms for community control and stakeholder involvement       
– Providing inclusive community groups with knowledge, control, and authority throughout all program phases
– Programs designed with relevant stakeholders (government, local leaders, civil society, community)
Invest in capacity building of CBOs       
– Impact of CBOs driving process
– Emphasis on training and capacity building through ’learning by doing’
Facilitate community access to information      
– Flows of information as important as flows of funds (market opportunities, available resources, etc..)
– Growing use of information technology
Develop simple rules and strong incentives supported by monitoring and evaluation        
– Simple rules easy to interpret and apply
– Clearly defined procedures, widely disseminated; rules monitored and transparently enforced
Establish an enabling environment through institutional and policy reform      
– Empowered elected local governments responsive to constituents
– Inter-governmental arrangements for fiscal decentralization including fiscal flows to local governments and CBOs
– Conducive legal and regulatory framework that supports community action
– Clear sector policies with well-defined financing rules and defined roles and responsibilities of key players in each sector
Maintain flexibility in design of arrangements       
– Flexibility in design essential to allow systems to evolve
– Direct feedback from community on program performance (beneficiary assessments, etc..)
Ensure social and gender inclusion   
– Communities not homogeneous thus design need to be socially inclusive – giving voice and decision making to women, elderly, youth, minorities, those with HIV/AIDS, disabled. 
Design for scaling up      
– Approval and disbursement processes as decentralized as possible
Invest in an exit strategy    
– Recurrent services require permanent institutional and financing arrangements at locally affordable cost level